Lisa says: This is a really simple recipe, especially because you are only using one bowl for all of the mixing! This one isn’t a sweet recipe, but more fruity. Delicious!

Ingredients:

            Cake-

• 100 grams of softened butter
• 100 grams of granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• A pinch of salt
• Lemon zest
• 160 grams of all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons of baking powder
• 3 tablespoons of milk

Topping-

• A small box of strawberries
• 24 grams of Dr.Oetker’s Tortenguss (or strawberry jello)

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and butter your round spring baking pan.
2. In a large bowl, combine all of your cake ingredients and mix! This may take a little bit, simply because you’re adding all the ingredients at once, but not too long.
3. Pour the batter into your spring pan and bake for about fifteen to twenty minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.
4. Allow the cake to completely cool.
5. Wash and cut strawberries in half. Use a paper towel to dry. They must be really dry or else the jello will not stick.
6. Organise your strawberries neatly on the top of your cake.
7. Make your jello following the package directions.
8. Pour liquid jello over top your strawberries, making sure that not a single strawberry is sticking out. If they do, the strawberries will go bad QUICKLY.
9. Put your strawberry cake into the fridge and allow the jello to cool and stiffen.
10.  Enjoy!

What’s better than chocolate eggs at Easter? Chocolate creme eggs hidden in cupcakes, of course! Even better, with a few cheats, this is a quick, simple recipe that’s easy to make with a bunch of kids and minimal mess – and they taste as good as they look, especially when they’re bitten into!

What You Need:

300 grams caster sugar

300 grams of softened butter

6 eggs

2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

60 grams of cocoa (I used Cadbury brand)

240 grams of self raising flour

24 mini creme-filled Easter eggs. I used a mixture of Cadbury’s Creme Eggs, caramel-filled, strawberry-filled and mint.

24 cup cake cases. Good quality ‘foil’ cases work better for this recipe (though not essential)

2 tubs of commercial vanilla frosting. This is part of the ‘cheat’ bit.

Various aerosol food colours (colour in a can)

Various Easter-themed sugar decorations or melted chocolate

How it’s Done:

Freeze your eggs for a few hours, overnight is best.

Pre-heat your oven to 175 degrees Celsius. Line two by twelves cupcake tins with the cases. Using an electric beater, beat the sugar and butter until it lightens in colour and begins to ‘fluff’. Beat in the eggs on at a time, and then the vanilla. At this stage, your mix will probably look pretty ghastly and have begun to curdle. Don’t worry! It will all come back together with the next step – adding the flour and cocoa. As I’ve mentioned in previous recipes, this is a good time to remember to use the spill guard on your mixer, or to stir through the flour slowly. Unless, of course, you like to wear flour…

Now, don’t be thrown by the fact this is quite a stiff mixture. It needs to be that way to stop the eggs dropping. One mixed through, add a large teaspoon of mix to each cupcake case. You need enough to give a generous covering of the bottom of the cupcake. Then, add an unwrapped Easter egg, by laying it on its side. Cover with another spoonful of cake mix, making sure the egg is totally covered and the case is about 2/3 full. Bake for aprox. 20 minutes, or until the cake springs back when you touch it. The usual method of sticking a skewer inside won’t quite work this time.

When baked, allow your cupcakes to cool completely. Fill a disposable piping bag with frosting, and using a large nozzle, pipe a simple swirl. Give a quick squirt with the aerosol colours, and decorate with either: more eggs, melted chocolate or sugar decorations…or, you could use all of the above like we did!

It’s almost Easter! Just a few more days until the Easter Bunny is due to deliver the goods. And when you’re six years old, this is a Very Big Deal indeed. Such a big deal in fact, that the six year old living at my place has been counting down the days since… well, December 25^th came and went. My kids are also currently on school holidays, so to help keep Mr 6 amused (and yeah, maybe to keep the Bunny-ache at bay…), we’ve been making all sorts of Easter Yummies. First up, the Mandy Wrangles version of that oh-so-amazing-gooey-chocolately-fondantey-goodness in a ball – the Cadbury Creme Egg.

What You Need:

Egg shaped chocolate moulds. Mine are plain, but you could use patterned ones.

Milk chocolate melts.

White fondant, available from all cake decorating shops, some supermarkets and online.

Yellow food colouring.

Vanilla essence.

A clean paintbrush.

How It’s Done:

Make sure your moulds are clean and completely dry. Remember: when working with chocolate, moisture is your enemy. Melt milk chocolate using your favourite method, whether it be a small amount at a time in the microwave, over the stove-top using the double boiler method, or like me, using a cheap little fondue set. Once your chocolate is melted, you need to work fairly quickly.

Place a small teaspoon full into each chocolate shape. Now, you need these eggs to be hollow, so don’t over-fill. Using your paintbrush, brush the chocolate right up the sides of the mould before moving on to the next egg shape. Once all egg shapes have been chocolatised (yes, that is totally a word. Now.) put aside to set at room temperature.

While your chocolate egg shells are setting, take a couple of tablespoons of the white fondant and add some vanilla to taste and a few drops of yellow food colouring.

The vanilla flavour won’t give you the exact flavour of the Cadbury kind, but it’s pretty darn yummy.
Technically, you could use any flavour – in fact I’ve been considering making up some zombie Easter eggs with green or blue insides flavoured with blueberry or mint… but that could be an entirely different blog post…

Once your shells are set, spoon a teaspoon of white fondant into each. Then repeat with a smaller amount of yellow fondant in the centre. Melt up some more chocolate and smear over the top of your shells, trying not to make too much mess of your fondant.

Smooth off the top with a flat knife or spatula, as in my pic.

Once the egg halves are completely set (don’t rush them), they will pop out of the moulds with a small tap. Then, with a little more chocolate dabbed onto the back, join two halves together to make a whole. See… so easy a six year old could do it!

Chocolate shells with fondant

Gooey Easter Goodness!

Ingredients:

Crust-

• 2 teaspoons dried yeast
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ¾ cup warm water (and a little more)
• 2 ½ cups flour
• 2 tablespoons olive oil

Topping-

• ½ cup canned tomato pasta sauce
• 3 cups grated pizza cheese (or any cheese you like)
• ¾ cup cut up ham
• 2/3-1 cup drained and chopped canned pineapple

Instructions:

1. First start with the dough. In a small bowl add the yeast, salt, and ¾ cup of warm water. Allow this to sit for a while, until it becomes cloudy and bubbly looking. It should only take ten minutes or so.
2. In a larger bowl, combine the flour and oil, as well as the yeast mixture. Starting with a spoon, mix it together, but once it starts to become more dough-like, use your hands and begin kneading. Do this for a few minutes, until the dough is softer and elastic. If your dough is too sticky, add some more flour. If your dough is too dry and doesn’t really stretch, add some more warm water.
3. In your large bowl, make the dough into a ball and add some oil at the bottom and top. This is to ensure that your dough won’t stick to the bowl. Allow it to sit for about an hour or two. It should be quite a bit larger than before.
4. I used a baking sheet because I don’t have a pizza pan, but either is fine. Roll out the dough until it is the thickness of your liking, but don’t forget that it does rise while baking. If you’re using a rough dough pan, you should be able to get about two twelve inch (30 centimeter) rounds.
5. Preheat your oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit (260 degrees Celcius). After rolling out your dough, brush a little more oil onto your pizza dough. Spread the tomato pasta sauce evenly with a large spoon, as much or as little as you like. Sprinkle half of your cheese, add the ham and pineapple, and then sprinkle the rest of your cheese.
6. The pizza only needs about twenty minutes, or until it turns golden brown on the crust. Enjoy!

Made this one for my boyfriend. He loves Hawaiian pizza, and he LOVED this one! Wish I could have taken a picture of him eating it, but he was through three slices before I could even serve myself. 

‘Argentinian Street Food’ might be a super-cute cookbook with its simple cover and cut-out design, but don’t be fooled – it works damn hard for all that cuteness. A little on the quirky side, filled with simple step-by-step illustrations and gorgeous photographs, it’s the sort of book that will have you pouring over the recipes just for the fun of it. And then, pretty much demanding you cook from it. It’s that irresistible.

 But what I love most about Argentinian Street Food is the subject matter. Yeah, yeah, of course – FOOD – but my favourite kind of food. We’re not talking sit-down to eight courses that take three days to prepare here, Street Food is exactly what it should be: simple to prepare. Simple to hold. Simple to eat, pastries. The kind of food where you’re more concerned about the awesome conversation you’re having with the people you’re sharing that food with than which of the eight knives and forks you’re supposed to use first. In other words, this is social food. It’s fun and it’s tasty. And then there’s ice cream. Well, helados, which is kind of like Argentina’s version of gelato, but… different.

The authors, Enrique Zononi and Gaston Stivelmaher are Argentinian chefs who live and work in Paris, serving up their specialty pastries and ice cream in three different restaurants, as well as a mobile food cart that wanders through the streets of Paris. Called ‘Carrito’, the van is a tribute to the Buenos Aires of the 1950’s, serving empanadas and helados. The book starts out with the basics – how to make the two different styles of dough required for making stuffed empanadas (baked and fried).

Then, with step-by-step instructions even a first-timer can understand, it moves on to how to fill and fold the dough ‘parcels’, and, most importantly, how to ‘hem’ them to get not just a great-looking result, but a empanada that won’t leak. And then, the recipes move on to the actual fillings. For me, the first one I’m going to try cooking is definitely the Blue Cheese and Celery (with pecan nuts and mozzarella too!) though my husband is keen on checking out the Duck Confit and Foie Gras version. But it’s not just extravagant, out-there fillings included here – good old ham and cheese gets a look-in too.

Zanoni and Stivelmaher have also included a handful of ‘Pica Pica’ dishes, which are basically ‘little dishes’ – a bit of something on the side. My favourite here is the marinated beetroot with fresh goat’s cheese and chopped pistachios. Omgosh!

Finally, we get back to the helados and dulces – or confectionary. I’m passionate about making my own ice cream, and the stand-out recipe for me here is the Raspberry-Malbec sorbet. I can’t wait to try it out with some home-grown raspberries. And oh, while we’re at it, I think the Preserved Cumquats recipe just saved me the drama of marmalade this year…

Argentinian Street Food is available from April 1^st, 2014.

Published by Murdoch Books

160 pages, hardcover

ISBN – 9781743362945

RRP – $29.95